Nick
The drive isn't far, and quicker at this time of night with less traffic. I try not to look at my hands on the steering wheel because if I do, I'll see her on them. The ghost of her hip under my palm. The way her hair caught on my knuckles when I swept it back.
I didn't want to leave her.
The thought sits under everything else. I left her warm and bare in a moment that was supposed to be ours. I told her I'd come back, but I don't know when, because my father is dying.
I inhale through my nose. Press the gas a little harder.
The last clear conversation I had with my father replays in my mind. Hide her, my son. Or bury her. Those are the only options he will leave you.
I'd told him she was nothing. New. It's the only lie I've told my father since I was nine years old, and he heard it for what it was, but he didn't push because he didn't have the breath. He just closed his eyes and told me to beware of my own uncle.
Viktor will already know about Sadie. I'm almost certain of it.
I haven't moved on her the way I would have moved on any other thing I wanted.
I took her to dinner in a diner with windows facing the street.
I kissed her under a streetlight. I walked into the lobby of her building and let a camera I paid to install watch me do it.
Dmitri has the feed. My own men have the feed.
And I'd bet diamonds Viktor's men have it by now, too.
I run it back the way I run everything back. Every moment I was visible. Every moment she was visible with me.
I was reckless. I should have been more careful.
The gate is open when I pull in. Lucia is on the step with Dmitri behind her.
She doesn't meet my eyes. She opens the door and falls in behind me the way she always does, and I understand from the way her hands are folded at her waist that I have less time than Dmitri told me on the phone.
"How long?" I ask.
"Not long, Mr. Zhirinovsky." Her voice is low. "The breaths. They've changed."
I take the stairs two at a time.
My father's room is lit by the lamp on his nightstand and nothing else. The oxygen machine is still hissing. His hand rests on top of the blanket, his eyes are closed, and his chest is moving in a pattern I don’t recognize. Long pause. Short pull. Long pause. The body forgetting its own rhythm.
Viktor is in the chair by the bed.
He stands when I walk in. He puts his hand on my shoulder as I pass, and I let him, because I don't have the seconds to spare for what my hand would do to his throat if I acted on instinct.
"Kolya," he says, low, the way a man says it at a funeral. "I'm glad you came."
I sit in the chair. I take my father's hand.
"Papa."
His eyes don't open. His fingers twitch against mine. It's enough.
"I'm here," I say in Russian, keeping my voice low, because this is between him and me. "I'm here, Papa. I'm not going anywhere."
His mouth moves. Nothing comes out.
I lean closer.
"Kolya," he breathes. Just that.
My throat closes. Viktor is two feet behind me. I don't know how much of the Russian he's catching, and it doesn't matter, because the Russian isn't for him.
"Everything is safe, Papa. As it should be."
His fingers twitch again. A flicker of something that might have been a smile if he had the muscle for it.
His hand goes still in mine.
The pause between breaths stretches, and I hold my own breath with him, as if I can keep him here by the force of not letting go.
I'm thinking about her while he dies and I hate myself for it.
I'm thinking about her face on the pillow and the way she laughed when I rolled her on top of me, the first real laugh I'd ever heard from her. I'm thinking of Viktor and how far he'd really go to get his hands on my father's empire.
Somewhere fourteen miles from here, a woman who doesn't know my last name well enough to spell it is lying in the dark with no idea that the second my father's hand goes cold in mine, the clock starts on everything.
His chest pulls.
Shallow. Shallower.
I put my forehead against the back of his hand.
"Spasibo, Papa," I whisper. Thank you. "Za vsyo." For all of it.
His chest pulls again. Let’s go. Doesn't pull back.
I wait. Lucia is in the doorway; I feel her there without looking.
I close my eyes.
I sit with him like that for a minute. Maybe longer. I don't count. I listen to the oxygen machine hiss into a nose that isn't breathing anymore, and I feel the weight of his hand in mine go from still to heavy.
I lift his hand and press my mouth to the back of it.
Then I lay it down on the blanket and fold his fingers the way I've seen Lucia fold them at night, and I stand.
Viktor clears his throat behind me.
"Kolya."
I turn.
His face has arranged itself into practiced sorrow. His eyes are a little wet and his mouth is set in the soft regretful line of a man who has just lost a brother.
"Kolya," he says again. He crosses to me. He takes my shoulders in both hands. "Plemyannik. My boy."
I let him.
"Listen to me." His voice drops. A man handling a grieving nephew. "You've had a hard night. Losing your father. Go home. Sleep. Let me take care of the house tonight. I'll sit with him. I'll handle the arrangements, the calls, the men. You don't need to carry it tonight. Family carries family."
His hands tighten a fraction.
"Tomorrow, we sit down," he says. "You and me. I'll walk you through what needs to happen in the next week. There is a way these things are done, Kolya. Traditionally. It's important. The men need to see the family speak with one voice."
One voice.
His voice, he means.
I look at him. I look at the hands on my shoulders, the wet eyes and the softness around his mouth, and I think about my father lying behind me with his fingers folded. I think about the way he squeezed my hand a few days ago when he said hide her or bury her.
I think about Sadie. Her birthmark. Her laugh.
Something in me that has been wound tight for six months goes very still.
I lift Viktor's hands off my shoulders.
I hold them in mine for a second, with a solemness that isn’t just about the loss of my father, and then I let them go.
"No, Uncle."
His face doesn't move. That's the tell. A man who was genuinely grieving would have blinked. A man who was genuinely offering would have looked confused.
Viktor just goes still.
"No?"
"No." I keep my voice low, because Lucia is in the doorway. "I'll sit with him tonight. I'll handle the arrangements. I'll make the calls. I'll speak to the men."
"Kolya—"
"My father made his wishes clear to me." I watch his face as I say it.
I watch the small tightening at the corner of his eye, the thing he can't control because he didn't know I'd had that conversation.
"The chair is mine. He told me so. He told me what he wanted, and he told me how he wanted it done.
I will not let my father down, not even in death, Viktor. "
"You are still recovering from a concussion," he says, referring to the wreck on the freeway last week. "You have stitches. You are grieving. Let me—"
"No."
He stops.
I take one step forward. Close enough that he has to tilt his head a fraction to keep contact with my eyes.
"Go home, Viktor." I keep the voice low.
I keep the face empty. "Come back tomorrow as family, and pay your respects.
We will talk then about what the next week looks like.
I will tell you what I need from you, and you will do it, because my father is not yet cold, and this is not the hour to discuss succession over his body. Do you understand me?"
He looks at me for a long second.
His mouth moves into something that wants to be a smile and isn't.
"Of course, Kolya." He lowers his head a fraction. A small bow, the kind a man gives when he has decided to pick his ground somewhere else. "Of course. Forgive me. The grief. I spoke too soon."
"Goodnight, Uncle."
"Goodnight, Pakhan."
He says the word carefully. He watches my face when he says it. I don't give him anything back, because the word is his test and my silence is my answer.
He walks past me to the door. Lucia steps aside. His shoes on the stairs are the only sound in the house for a long moment, then the front door opens and closes, a car starts in the drive, and he's gone.
I turn back to my father.
I sit down in the chair. I take his hand again, even though it won't hold me back this time, and I hold it anyway.
Then I pull my phone from my pocket and call Dmitri.
"It's done," I say. "Wake the men. All of them. And put two on Sadie's building tonight. Inside the lobby. I want eyes on her door by the time I hang up this phone."